emotions

How do you find your way, making decisions, coping with risk and uncertainty, muddling through, getting perspective, solving problems, and staying upbeat so you can achieve your business vision? One part of the answer—of course there isn’t just ONE secret to being a successful entrepreneur: keep a journal. Entrepreneurs–and, yes, we…

All kinds of people in different ways know that writing in journals helps cultivate emotional balance. Look at this diverse list: “We taught the diary as an exercise in creative will; as an exercise in synthesis; as a means to create a world according to our wishes, not those of…

It all started in the 1980s when the professor Dr. James Pennebaker found in his landmark social psychology study that college students who wrote about emotional upheaval in their lives for 15 minutes during each of four consecutive days, visited the health service half as often as their counterparts who…

In my earlier career I conducted studies of the richly productive area where sea meets shore. The coast is a dynamic place, where tides swish in and out; where barnacles and mussels cling to rock or shell; where seagrasses abound attracting small fish which attract bigger fish, which of course…

Yesterday evening, Beth Jacobs and I completed the last of the four-session webinar, Writing for Emotional Balance. I, personally, found the webinar to be really informative. If you are anything like me there are times when you use your journal to er, um, er… shall I say FULLY express your…

I am learning a lot during the webinar that Dr. Beth Jacobs is offering. The four session webinar is called Writing for Emotional Balance. (She’s the author of the book Writing for Emotional Balance.) Last night, the second of a series of four sessions, Dr. Jacobs spoke about acceptance of…

About a year ago I read the book Writing for Emotional Balance. I was impressed. There are plenty of books about journal writing that I’ve read, and sometimes, I feel like they are re-hashing of similar material. But this book was different from any that I’ve read. The author, Beth…

I have warm memories of Valentine’s day as a kid. My father would bring home three heart-shaped boxes filled with chocolate: A large one for my mother, and two smaller ones for my sister and I. As an adult I never bought into the commercial gifts of Valentine’s day–the little…

Sometimes people feel that a particular journal entry they have written is one that they never want to read again. They want to burn it, rip it into shreds, and do away with it totally. I have a slightly different attitude: I think that all of my writing–good, bad, beautiful…

We all muddle through at times. In fact muddling is an inescapable place to be when you are finding your way in a new environment. When you are working on a new job, learning new subject matter, or starting a new role in life, the way to begin is often…